title : Men Without Women
I find that each short story within the book covers a different aspect of the idea that - Men without Women - suggests. Men without women are purposeless, lost, deranged, empty, so on and so forth.
My personal favorite story would be the one where the married guy found his wife having an affair with her colleague. He leaves her and sets up a bar at his aunt's old house. As he runs the quaint little bar, he suppreses his emotions regarding his wife's affair, just thinking "it is what it is". He meets a ton of characters at the bar, had s*x with one of them and could continue living off the small income he got. When his wife came to sign the divorce papers, he said it was alright that she had an affair, and that's when everything took a different turn. A cat which he once fed everyday disappeared, and in return the bar was visited by snakes. His customers stopped coming too. A customer who was secretly employed by the protagonist's aunt suggests that he leaves this bar and travels away immediately. The customer laid down some ground rules for the protagonist : don't stay at the same location for too long. send a postcard to his aunt without anything written on it. He does so but started feeling purposeless with himself as he continued mindlessly travelling. One day at one of the hotels he was staying he wrote to his aunt and heard a knock. It (knocking) turned out to be metaphorical, having allowed his wife to have an affair and numbing himself with taking care of the bar, he lost a nuance emotion which I believe is compassion. You lost your wife and you didn't do anything to resolve it. I wonder what the bar symbolizes though ? I still can't wrap my head around it :P
Anyways I rate this book a solid 8/10. Great for those who like short stories that circulate a similar theme. Also since they're short, they're convenient for working/busy people.
P.S. I decided to make a new goal this year and it's to read more fiction books. In college I only ever read academic readings day in and day out, making this new goal really exciting and refreshing for me !
[Next book - Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami]